If a founder can’t tell an amazing story, it’ll be hard for them to do any of this. They have to capture media attention, keep their board aligned and energized, and consistently bring new customers into the fold. They have to convince investors and employees that this incredibly unlikely thing they’re doing is about to take the world by storm. They have to be able to sell against the status quo. All successful founders can deliver a compelling narrative. We’d much rather understand how you’re attacking the market, evaluating the risks, and taking on unknowns. In fact, it’s a red flag if you think you do. No one expects a pre-launch company to have all the answers. The founder who volunteers their ignorance has far more credibility.
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When asked the same question about pricing, they might say, “Well, we’re considering a few different options depending on the outcome of some tests we’re running.” When asked about the cost of customer acquisition, their response could be, “We don’t know what our numbers will be, but here’s our model based on comparable companies.” When asked about the risks, they identify several - and engage us in a vibrant discussion about how to handle them. The second type of entrepreneur will answer questions when they can, but when they don’t know, they say so.
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Whenever we try to address potential risks, they tell us they don’t exist. What will cause customer churn in three years. So they’ll make sure they have a definitive response always, even if they shouldn’t. The first thinks they’re expected to know the answer to every question. We’re always meeting the same two types of entrepreneurs. Did you skip spring break to pursue a long-term project? Did you work while you were in school? Have you built anything that took months of heads-down crunch mode to make possible? When we consider working with you as a founder, we look for your willingness to make these tradeoffs earlier in your life and career. The most successful entrepreneurs are willing to sacrifice in the short term for long-term impact. Being a founder is a constant, grueling exercise in deferring happiness and victory. But there are a few other things we haven’t seen written about or discussed enough that end up mattering a lot: Then there’s all the typical stuff: integrity, credibility, market understanding, learning ability, etc. This is an exceedingly rare set of skills - and it’s what we seek to find in every founder conversation we have. You have to be able to draw it yourself and execute at the same time. You can’t wait for someone to hand you a roadmap. You have to overcome inertia, have an unbelievable amount of conviction, and be willing to drive through brick walls. To mix our metaphors, before a founder starts building their castle, they have to make sure they’ve picked the right piece of land.īuilding an enduring company is ridiculously hard. First-party retailers are valued very differently from third-party ecommerce sites.
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SaaS companies have a different range of opportunities than on-premise software makers. Let’s say you win the whole thing - is the prize worth winning? The game is long and hard, and some markets are more rewarding than others. Third, we take a close look at the market you’re going after. As an extension of this, we want to see creative thinking around go-to-market strategy as well as product. That’s one of the strongest data points you can offer. If there are people using your product or service who wouldn’t know what to do without you, we want to hear about it. We reached out to the company and invested.
Several years ago, we heard a handful of the founders in our community raving about a new business intelligence tool called Looker. Second, if you have a product in market, a small group of passionate early customers is a strong indicator for us. What do you understand about a market or a need that no one else does or that other companies in the space get wrong? And why is your company the most likely to win at addressing this gap? Above all, we look for compelling and contrarian insight into how the world works.
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